By Alice Messham

Sitting on the seashore, a man listens for his siren’s song, waiting for his long lost love to return to him. 

Mermaids have been here. Lorelei and Melusine, Lamorna and Morveren. Their briny breath has painted the grey rock white. Their icy glance has made the thrift shrivel. Sirens, their tumultuous song has made the ocean writhe.

He comes here to listen. He comes here to look. He comes here too late.

He lives on a precipice above the ocean’s sweep. “Runs his house like a ship,” they say, in the village. High on a hill, clouds billow above it like sails. Cumulus, nimbus, they race over his roof to gather above the shore. That’s when he knows mermaids are coming.

Like Ulysses, he locks all the doors, but he opens the windows, and he pins back his ears.

Lorelei, protectorate of the Rhine. Lamorna, wronged, vengeful, wrecker of ships and enticer of men. Melusine, a faithful wife and a loving mother – until her secret was revealed. Morveren, who stole Matthew Trewella from his kinfolk and made a merman out of him. Their voices rise in frenzy. Breakers devour the sand. Music rushes through the house.

Afterwards he goes down to the sand and breathes the saline air. They are gone, the sea is calm again. But their chant whirls on inside his head. He glances at his house high above, hazy through the sea spray. He gazes at the patterns the sea has made on the sand. He stares at the sun, low in the sky and offering up a shimmering pathway across the sea. As if he could take that path. As if he could follow her. As if he could leave. This is his place. This is his beach. This is his home.

When he met her, he saved her. She was stranded, and he helped her. He heard her call, and he went to her. In return, she granted his wish. For nine years, she filled the ship-like house with song. She made the curtains swell, the windows weep and the walls tremble. But he can still remember the night she left. He remembers her face. He remembers her eyes, full of tears. For nine years, he kept a secret. But when she made the discovery, she was compelled. She began to sing. She beckoned the clouds to gather overhead. She summoned the surf and it blanketed the ground. Then she was gone.

She was his red cap, his silkie wife.

When he ventures into the village they treat him kindly and with respect, “the widower,” they call him. He goes to church on Sundays, the most elderly of the elderly. He sits at the back, like a statue, never moving, never standing, never kneeling. Just listening. He likes to hear about the man who was half man, half god. He likes it because he knows that in the middle ages priests used the mermaid to explain.

At evensong, the choir sings Eternal father, strong to save. If the villagers look closely they can see he’s crying, fat pearly tears running down his cheeks. He has good hearing. He can hear what they’re whispering. “His wife disappeared, years ago,” they say.  But she didn’t, because he knows where she is. She’s out there. She’s at the end of a glittering pathway made of setting sunlight. She’s with the mermaids. One day she’ll come back.

This is a mermaid seashore. Here he sits, not selling seashells but telling tales.